FOSS gaming
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Hey guys!
I am a college student in the united states and I think that the community is lacking a bit in games for GNU/Linux, I know that there are 3d games out there that are FOSS but how can we compete with Steam if we do not have a centralized distributor and development center for games of our own? So I want to start using my spare time on this project I started tonight called: libreMist, and here are the basic ideas of it:
>All games are required to be GPL compatible
>Mimic the functionality of Steam to make playing free games just as easy
>No forced updates on the client
While we likely cannot compete with Steam in the windows market, but now that GNU/Linux is being tainted with proprietary software, I think that if a project rose and picked up momentum that we could compete with Steam and Valve on the GNU/Linux market, I hope that you guys will be interested in this idea as well, here is my contact info if any of you guys wish to collaberate with me!
email: name at domain
Here is the page I have made for the project (I know that it is empty but I hope to have at least a skeleton of a GUI by the end of the week) Thank you for reading guys!
https://sourceforge.net/projects/fossgaming/
"All war is, but class struggle"
- Brigham Keys Esq.
Isn't this solved by GNU/Linux distros? They have centralized repos and
package managers that allow easily installing the packages. Having the
game included in Debian leads to it being available later in many
distros (and easy to backport to their current releases).
Yeah, it seems to be solving a problem that doesn't really exist on GNU/Linux. If the original poster were to have been talking about making more free games that's one thing but otherwise yeah - The software distribution problem was licked years ago in GNU/Linux with package managers.
Hello there! Here's a few links you might find useful
* https://libregamewiki.org/
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desura#Source_release
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Yes I am aware that those games exist, I was just suggesting that there could be a place for these games to be distributed. Even though I am aware that package managers solve the whole distribution issue, that most package managers do not have all of the games in the libregame wiki, so this project would have the aim of aiding these games to be distributed.
It's possible to host custom repositories, e.g. PPAs for Ubuntu-based systems like Trisquel.
"Yes I am aware that those games exist, I was just suggesting that there could be a place for these games to be distributed"
There is a place: Get them into existing GNU/Linux distro repositories. As you've said, the distribution issue's already solved so that's the only thing left. As mtjm pointed out, you should only have to get it in a few of the big "root" ones (like Debian, etc.) and all of their derivatives get to pick it up.
That's the thing to work on, IMO, not re-solving the software distribution issue.
Thank you for libregameswiki link.
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It's true that package managers solve the distribution issue, and a great way to achieve what BrighamKeys is suggesting would be a libre games PPA, which could be added to any apt-based distro.
However, I think the appeal of Steam is broader than just the distribution mechanism. It's a graphics-rich, content-rich portal that facilitates discovery of new games to play. There are also social features (that some would consider "gimmicks") like achievement tracking, and hosted forums for all the games. Not to mention "Steam chat", which I believe is just XMPP, but it's nice to have it integrated and automatic.
Then, of course, there's the elephant in the room, which is that Steam is also a payment mechanism that allows the purchase of proprietary games. I don't want to get into a FOSS-vs-prop. discussion here, but FOSS games don't really have to solve this issue, as you can't really sell a download of a piece of FOSS. (Well, you can, but there would be no incentive for anyone to pay it when current holders are free to pass the software on for gratis). Maybe we could look at something involving bitcoins here, but IMO that would be for donations only, not purchases per-se.
There are tons of games for gnu/linux systems.
Now about a platform like Steam you may look at Deepin Game Center.Maybe can be adapted to be what you want.
http://planet.linuxdeepin.com/2013/11/28/linux-deepin-2013-is-released/
Sorry, but I think this is like selling watering-cans in the desert.
We don't have a problem organizing this huge amount of excellent free software games at the moment.
Our problem is: there are extremly few excellent free software games.
So if you want to contribute to the situation I highly recommend joining a developer team or starting a new game project.
And of course we have "tons of games" but most of them are not what a gamer would call a game.
You can't compare some 2d arcade games to epic masterpieces of the proprietary world.
Well I have installed Minetest in creative mode and I am very happy with this game. :)
With Minetest you may build something like this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M183oxcU8zo
I don't know any masterpieces games from proprietary world to do this for free or for money except Minecraft. (which is a indie game). But Minetest ist the free variant of Minecraft so is better.
You might be happy with Minetest, but that doesn't change the fact that the non-free world has much better games than the free world in much greater numbers.
Games are a tough category to win at with freedom. Any two games are usually sufficiently different that one cannot easily replace the other. SuperTux doesn't stop people from wanting to play Super Mario Bros, for example; differences that would be simple adaptation for programs designed to do work are what make SuperTux and Super Mario Bros completely different games in the eyes of players. This means that the non-free world necessarily having more games than the free world is more noticeable than for any other type of program.
Another problem is the non-free world keeps churning out more and more games like a factory. A lot of gamers are used to this now, and they would be disappointed to not have this in the free world. But this isn't easy to achieve; it happens in the non-free world because there are tons of indie game developers.
With that in mind, what we really need is a social change: we need to convince indie developers to take the extra step of releasing their source code and applying a free/libre software license. There are a lot of challenges involved in this, most notably the misguided notion of source code being "art" that they don't want people to "tamper with", but it's what we need to happen for the gaming landscape of the free world to be even remotely as good as the gaming landscape of the non-free world. Adding a couple free games is good; it makes transition to the free world a little easier for some people, but for every free game made by us, hundreds of non-free games are made by indie developers, and only those which gain a following will matter in the long run.
Once we are able to build our own hardware it is possible to make our own "gaming machine" without any malicious features; we can make sure that it has no internet access, no camera, no microphone etc.
Since I don't do any practicle work with games, I wouldn't refuse to run non-free games on such a self-made machine because I know that it can't have any malicious functionality.
The free gaming machine should also have working 3D :). I think the lack of that is part of the problem.
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"what we really need is a social change: we need to convince indie developers to take the extra step of releasing their source code and applying a free/libre software license"
Herein lies the problem. It's not just a case of releasing source - applying a license like the GPL, especially in the case of downloaded software removes the possibility of getting rich from sales of the game. Freedoms 2 and 3 mean that anyone can legally obtain a copy of a game without paying for it. So the problem isn't that developers fear losing control of their "art", but that they want to be paid for it.
Keep in mind that there are tons of gratis, non-commercial indie games, too. Most of them don't get source code releases because their authors didn't think of the possibility that it could be important.
I don't think not being able to get rich is the problem with commercial games, though. It's a well-known fact that video game developers don't make a whole lot of money; the average salary for a commercial video game developer, IIRC, is around $30,000-$40,000, a lot less than other programming jobs. They do it because they want to make games, not because they think they'll get rich. The only ones who think they can get rich are naive amateurs. This doesn't say anything about video game publishing corporations; of course corporations put the bottom line above everything else, but I think many indie commercial game developers would be fine with releasing their source code if they knew that they could still make a decent wage. I've written an article about that actually:
This is a very good article and reading the stupid comments drives me really crazy...
*shrug* It's about what I expected. I'm glad there was a response at all, and at that, a huge one for this site; it was on the front page of this site's articles for a long time (something like a month and a half) because of all the comments. Most was negative, but some was positive.
Just wanted to say I agree with the people who pointed out that the distribution problem is pretty much solved thanks to the wonderful package management system APT and it's various frontends. And that it would likely make a much bigger difference if you
* Improved the games themselves
* Got them included into repositories, preferably as far upstream as possible (Debian) for maximum coverage
I found this platform to make something like Steam and Desura.
It's a platform for indie games but you may add some changes.
It's name is Tiggit and is GPL licenced.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/tiggit/
With free software gaming, isn't there the issue that because it is free, multiplayer games anonomously with random other people who just happen to be playing the game at the same time will be impossible (like with many popular proipriatary games), as someone could modify the game make it easier for them to play and win
I thought about this issue.
Why not putting the important stuff on the server and making sure that the client can't cheat no matter how you modify it?
Of course I am a layman concerning development of online multiplayer games, but I think this might be possible.
So in a FOSS world, those games have to become more server sided which makes them basically more to SaaSS then before.
But since they're only games and not programs you do a practicle job with, I think it would be ok.
That's not SaaSS. A server for a game connects several players together, which is something you can't do on your own computer. Only single-player games can (and should) be done entirely on your own computer. Multiplayer games will actually commonly transparently launch a local server on your computer for single-player games, as is done in FreeCiv and Minetest, for example.
Cheat prevention is also something you can't do on your own computer unless you're the server host (since the server controls the game), so the server being solely responsible for this wouldn't be SaaSS either.
Games can be designed to prevent some forms of cheating: they can run
the same code in all clients, so bugs and cheating result in
synchronization errors (Wesnoth does this, with a server passing data
and generating random numbers; Widelands does this too, using the same
idea for replays), or even prevent clients from knowing
data that they shouldn't without using a trusted server (mental poker:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_poker, I don't know if it's
practically used, it's slow).
That's rather like saying that surely free programs are more easily cracked because you can see exactly how they work. Other than clients checking each other, which has been mentioned, the server is ultimately in control, so it can do whatever sanity checks are necessary to prevent cheating. This is the type of thing that should be used to stop cheating, not "security through obscurity".
Why would anybody compete with Steam?
Would http://www.playdeb.net/welcome/ do the job?
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